


A Matter of Fault

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [18]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Haven (Dragon Age), Post-Break Up, Skyhold, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 00:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13601361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Hawke hears terrible news out of Haven, and fears the worst.





	A Matter of Fault

The days are gauzy, muted things after the news.  She tries to stay solid and strong, like she imagines he would, would anything to happen to her.  She stays busy in the streets, helping mages, dodging templars, hiding her face but not her blades.  She wishes there was another rogue beside her. **  
**

The nights are scared and lonely in her narrow rented room.  She misses Anders then, and the way he once held her.  She pulls the blankets over her head and she remembers the broken pieces between them, remembers the sorrow smearing the good times, remembers why she said goodbye.  She remembers the letters she wrote; she remembers what Varric told her.

The blankets are warm over her head.  It’s really too hot for them, even though she feels cold inside.  She sweats uncomfortably, thinking of snow and fire, dragon’s breath.  Parchment sits folded on the tiny nightstand, letters from Merrill and Aveline and even Bethany. Min Hawke stares at the letters, all of them saying the same terrible thing:

_Haven is gone.  Have you heard from Varric?_

* * *

Blood on her knives, blood on her knives.  A familiar sight in a strange place, where the air smells of leather and wharfs and wine.  She holds out a hand to the frightened mage boy, smoke still clinging around his robes, and she gives him something to help.  A map.

“Ask for Anders, when you find them,” she whispers.  “Tell him Hawke sent you.  And tell him to take care.”  She smiles.  A rueful one.  

The boy nods fervently, hope sparking in his eyes.  The brilliance of it burns her.  Maker, but Anders was right, wasn’t he?

If only he’d have told her.

She watches the boy go, wiping the sweat from her brow.  Thinks again of Haven, the sore spot her mind keeps probing, the fear and worry spooling out in her stomach.  Thinking of Anders, aiding his cause, these things distract from her worst thoughts.  She watches the boy and she wonders if a letter in familiar looped script will find her today.

None of her own have made it through.

* * *

Muted days become grey and muggy weeks.  An unending fog covers Antiva City like a dripping shroud.  Letters from Kirkwall come, urgent and worried.  A letter from Bethany about something strange with the Wardens.  Even a note from Anders that thanks her for saving the boy.  He asks how she’s doing in careful, formal words.  He asks if the rumors about the Inquisition are true.

She doesn’t know what to write him.  She hasn’t seen Varric’s handwriting in over a month.  Her pen hovers in her hand, ink beading on the tip of the nib, dripping and smudging Anders’ letter.  She stares westward into the grey, ink smudging her hands, and she watches the sunset gild the clouds like veins.  

* * *

Hawke slaps an elfroot poultice onto the wound in her arm, scowling.  Healing this way is tiresome, but at least she can do it on her own.  The poultice feels cool against her skin, welcome in the stolid, humid air.  She hates Antiva City more deeply every day.

A knock at the door, then the  _skiff_ of a letter sliding underneath it.  She knots the poultice in place with a strip of linen, and sinks to her knees, picking the letter off of the floor.

 _Serah Sparrow_ , it says, in familiar looping script.  Always one for jokes.

Sudden tears dot the parchment envelope, and she shreds it open in her haste.

* * *

The journey’s not an easy one, but secrecy, it seems, is needed less and less these days.  She makes good time, better than she could have hoped for.  The map in the letter flares clear in her mind, even through the swirling snow.

She crests the last hill, stands tall on the new-made path.  Skyhold’s beautiful… and imposing.  She thinks of the people who hunted her name, the war she stumbled into, the danger he described.  None of it matters at the moment.  She hurries down the road at dusk, cloak streaming behind her, heart beating a steady tattoo.

The guards examine her letter, let her pass with little fanfare.  She crosses into a ramshackle courtyard, debris and detritus piled around her.  The sun’s end drops blue-black shadows in the corners.

She turns into the blue-black, and suddenly she sees him, leaning there against the stone.  He catches her eye; he goes still and sharp and focused.  She stops.  Breathes.  The moment stretches.

She speaks first.  The words sputter out of her.  “You’re in  _such_  terrible trouble, you do realize.”  Her brow arches.  Even in the dark she can see the twitch of a familiar smile on his face.

“Now, Hawke, this one was  _not_  my fault,” Varric protests, and then she pounces, swooping him into an abrupt and violent embrace, mashing his face into her chest.  It’s clumsy and utterly graceless and more than a little risque, but she finds she doesn’t give a shit.  She hugs him hard and his arms, tight around her, are impossibly strong.

“I don’t care.  You can’t scare me like that again,” Hawke sniffs, and she’s entirely unsurprised to find tears on her cheeks.  

“I missed you, too,” says Varric, tilting his head and gazing up at her. For a moment they just grin foolishly, fondly, fiercely at one another.

“Well, come on, then,” she says, reluctantly releasing him from the hug.  He lowers his arms slowly.

“Come on, where?”

She juts out her elbow at him until he takes it, linking his arm with hers.  She has to keep her arm lowered, and he has to raise his own, for it to work, but work it does.  “You owe me a pint for all this worry, Varric.  It’s only fair.”

“And  _that’s_  m– our Hawke, all right.”

“Don’t forget it, dwarf.”

“You’d probably kill me if I tried.”

“Probably.”

Cold air on her neck, the smell of snow, half-frozen rock beneath her boots.  She doesn’t mind.  She’s warm in the way it counts, Varric at her side, and for tonight, that’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> witchofthewakingsea on tumblr requested: _varric and hawke reuniting at skyhold after varric finally manages to get hold of her after the whole “haven burning to the ground and the inquisition wandering through the mountains for weeks and finally settling in an abandoned castle thing” and hawke was probably worried sick and thought he was dead for a bit_
> 
> Thank you! Hope this fits the bill!


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